Myths of Babylonia and Assyria

Page: 6

At Kalkhi and Nineveh Layard uncovered the palaces of some of
the most famous Assyrian Emperors, including the Biblical
Shalmaneser and Esarhaddon, and obtained the colossi, bas
reliefs, and other treasures of antiquity which formed the
nucleus of the British Museum's unrivalled Assyrian collection.
He also conducted diggings at Babylon and Niffer (Nippur). His
work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam, a native
Christian of Mosul, near Nineveh. Rassam studied for a time at
Oxford.

The discoveries made by Layard and Botta stimulated others to
follow their example. In the "fifties" Mr. W.K. Loftus engaged in
excavations at Larsa and Erech, where important discoveries were
made of ancient buildings, ornaments, tablets, sarcophagus
graves, and pot burials, while Mr. J.E. Taylor operated at Ur,
the seat of the moon cult and the birthplace of Abraham, and at
Eridu, which is generally regarded as the cradle of early
Babylonian (Sumerian) civilization.

In 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson superintended diggings at Birs
Nimrud (Borsippa, near Babylon), and excavated relics of the
Biblical Nebuchadrezzar. This notable archaeologist began his
career in the East as an officer in the Bombay army. He
distinguished himself as a political agent and diplomatist. While
resident at Baghdad, he devoted his leisure time to cuneiform
studies. One of his remarkable feats was the copying of the
famous trilingual rock inscription of Darius the Great on a
mountain cliff at Behistun, in Persian Kurdistan. This work was
carried out at great personal risk, for the cliff is 1700 feet high
and the sculptures and inscriptions are situated about 300 feet
from the ground.

Darius was the first monarch of his line to make use of the
Persian cuneiform script, which in this case he utilized in
conjunction with the older and more complicated Assyro-Babylonian
alphabetic and syllabic characters to record a portion of the
history of his reign. Rawlinson's translation of the famous
inscription was an important contribution towards the
decipherment of the cuneiform writings of Assyria and
Babylonia.

Twelve years of brilliant Mesopotamian discovery concluded in
1854, and further excavations had to be suspended until the
"seventies" on account of the unsettled political conditions of
the ancient land and the difficulties experienced in dealing with
Turkish officials. During the interval, however, archaeologists
and philologists were kept fully engaged studying the large
amount of material which had been accumulated. Sir Henry
Rawlinson began the issue of his monumental work The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western
Asia on behalf of the British Museum.

Goodspeed refers to the early archaeological work as the
"Heroic Period" of research, and says that the "Modern Scientific
Period" began with Mr. George Smith's expedition to Nineveh in
1873.

George Smith, like Henry Schliemann, the pioneer investigator
of pre-Hellenic culture, was a self-educated man of humble
origin. He was born at Chelsea in 1840. At fourteen he was
apprenticed to an engraver. He was a youth of studious habits and
great originality, and interested himself intensely in the
discoveries which had been made by Layard and other explorers. At
the British Museum, which he visited regularly to pore over the
Assyrian inscriptions, he attracted the attention of Sir Henry Rawlinson.
So greatly impressed was Sir Henry by the young man's enthusiasm
and remarkable intelligence that he allowed him the use of his
private room and provided casts and squeezes of inscriptions to
assist him in his studies. Smith made rapid progress. His
earliest discovery was the date of the payment of tribute by
Jehu, King of Israel, to the Assyrian Emperor Shalmaneser. Sir
Henry availed himself of the young investigator's assistance in
producing the third volume of The
Cuneiform Inscriptions.